Opportunities and Challenges

PUBLISHED: SEPTEMBER 2008

Since 11 September 2001, terrorism and the reaction to it by many governments and intergovernmental bodies, including the United Nations, have had an increasing impact on civil society.

For their part, nongovernmental and other civil society organizations (CSOs) have played a critical role in encouraging governments and the United Nations to calibrate their response to terrorism by working to be effective against those who mean harm without eroding human rights and the rule of law. In 2006, with that challenge in mind, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously agreed to a global strategy that outlines a holistic approach to countering terrorism and calls for the collective effort of an array of stakeholders, including civil society, to implement it.

This 2008 report by the Center on Global Counterterrorism Cooperation surveys the work of CSOs related to the four pillars of the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy.